Karlie Kloss Sticks Her Neck Out for Abortion Rights in Florida

Ivanka Trump's supermodel sister-in-law wrote an op-ed in the Miami Herald today about spending the day at a Florida abortion clinic ahead of Amendment 4.

Family get-togethers in South Florida must be pretty awkward these days for the brothers Kushner and their respective wives, Ivanka Trump and supermodel Karlie Kloss, as Kloss continues her outspoken advocacy for abortion rights and low-key campaigns against Ivanka’s dad. And hard as it may be to love the obscenely wealthy spouse of any Kushner, my respect grew for Kloss today after she published an op-ed in the Miami Herald detailing her recent visit to an abortion clinic and urging Floridians to vote “yes” on Amendment 4, a ballot measure going before voters in November that would protect abortion rights up to about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Kloss writes that she sat in the clinic in Tamarac, Fla., with a patient she calls “Sarah,” who “tearfully explained that she was already a mom, and she and her husband were struggling financially to care for their four children, one of whom is physically disabled and requires around-the-clock care.” Florida bans abortion at six weeks — earlier than many women even realize they’re pregnant — which dramatically curtailed access throughout the South when the law was enacted earlier this year. Even before the state’s new six-week ban, the women’s health disaster was pretty dire there: Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas wrote about a woman who miscarried in a hair salon bathroom and lost half her blood after being denied an emergency abortion under the state’s previous 15-week ban.

So the stakes of this upcoming Florida ballot measure are pretty high, and Kloss made a clear, powerful argument for it in her column. Here’s an excerpt for those who aren’t subscribed to the Herald (though I urge you to subscribe if you can, it’s a great paper):

I’ve visited many abortion clinics, met with countless patients and the incredible doctors serving them, but I was still deeply moved and surprised by what I saw that day.

A small but mighty determined staff works around the clock to provide care to the patients they can—and they refuse to turn away those they legally cannot. Instead, they’re helping patients whose pregnancies are beyond six-weeks secure appointments and funds to travel the 11-hours by car to the nearest abortion clinic in North Carolina, or fly directly from Fort Lauderdale to Chicago or Washington D.C.

It’s not just anti-choice legislation they’re up against. The clinic now has fire doors and increased security measures to keep extremists out, but cruel anti-abortion laws are preventing women from walking in. Women deserve access to healthcare without government interference or fear of being harmed. We deserve to live in dignity and determine our own futures, not be diminished and degraded by arbitrary timelines and abortion bans.

The only way to guarantee that scenario in Florida is at the ballot box this November.

The small irony here is that Kloss’ sister-in-law Ivanka was widely expected to be a moderating influence on her dad, specifically on reproductive rights, during his first term. Ivanka met with Planned Parenthood in early 2017 to try and find a “compromise” amid the Republican crusade to defund the family planning provider, but her suggestion that Planned Parenthood simply stop performing abortions was obviously ridiculed as a non-starter. And Trump, of course, went on to appoint three SCOTUS justices who overturned Roe, paving the way for states like Florida to torture women who may become pregnant there.

I also must point out that in soft-endorsing Kamala Harris via her Instagram stories, Kloss is now openly rooting for a scenario in which Donald Trump is more likely to go to prison. So while Karlie and Ivanka have been trying to squash rumors that they’re “feuding,” we can hold tight to our suspicions as to why they never pose together for photos at the weddings of their mutual billionaire friends.

In Other News…

• J.D. Vance was loudly booed at a firefighters union conference in Boston after saying, “President Trump and I are proud to be the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history”

• Harris is leading Trump by 5 points nationally, 48-43%, in a new USA Today/Suffolk poll out today

• Another of one Elon Musk’s space rockets was grounded by the FAA after toppling over and exploding